Content and concurrent validity of competence assessment for health care giving (level II nursing) in Addis Ababa

Abstract

Background: Many countries in the world regulate professional teachings through competence-based education and assessment. Ethiopia has developed TVET strategy to be delivered in the competence-based approach which is essentially outcome-based education. Based on this, there are 20 industries currently under the TVET scheme. Among them the nursing sector is under the health industry. It has four levels of occupational standard. The level II occupational standard is referred to as health care giving. Candidates who are to be certified as health care givers (level II nursing) are expected to take Competence Assessment. This assessment is solely practical. Objective: This research is aimed at checking the content and concurrent validity of the competence assessment for nursing level II (health care giving) in Addis Ababa. Method: The content validation was done by assessment tool developers and assessors. The concurrent validation was done by comparing the in-school tests result with competence assessment results. All ethical standards were maintained.Results: Competency rate of level II nursing (health care giving) students in the year 2013 was 86.6%. The competency rate of government colleges (94%) was higher than that of private colleges 84% (66%-93%) with P<0.001 , competency rate has no significant difference in sex of candidates (male 87.6% females 86.4%) with P=0.74.The mean score for in-school grade point average for those who were not-yet-competent was 79+10 and 82+10 for competent ones. The difference was not significant with Mann Whitney U test result of P=0.042. The majority (>80%) of the assessors believed that nine (50%) core competence components were represented in the assessment tool. However, more than 60% of the assessors believed that three (16%) core competence components were not represented in the assessment tool. Conclusion: The concurrence between in-school grade and competence assessment result has shown relationship and most of the core competence units included in the assessment tool, while nearly 16% of the components of competence were not included in the tool. It is recommended to determine inter-rater reliability, follow content validation process and develop assessment tool bank. [Ethiop. J. Health Dev. 2014;28(3):185-190]